Examine the operations of a company Case Solution

In the first process in a bank, the customer goes to a machine where he/she takes a queue number and waits in the waiting area till the number arrives. He then enquires and fills in an application form. The (maker) checks documents and performs a transaction in the system. The customer while the procedure takes place has to wait for checker's approval who then (checker) checks transaction and authorises. Once the transaction has taken place, the customer leaves the counter.

The second process starts from a Credit Card Cheque, then, it moves on with confirmation of the cheque if it is correctly issued both by the maker and the checker. The (maker) then puts in the information of the credit card into the system and finally, the (checker) checks if credit card information is entered correctly. The assumptions made for this process are as follows:

1. 200-500 cheques every day, divided into batches of around 50.

2. There is only one specific checker is appointed in charge of credit card cheques.

3. Makers and checkers only do these steps when they finish everything in hand.

4. Each step only takes a few minutes, but often this work is not done until the end of the business day since some batches are waiting for available checker (maker) while there are makers (checker) available only.

The first process has certain issues that hinder the efficiency of carrying out the tasks as the bottleneck takes place in step 1 where the waiting time is always long especially at peak hours. The other bottleneck in the process is step 3 and step 4 wherein; the checking capacity is totally dependent on the system. It might be that there is a surplus or insufficient capacity in some branch or some period. It might also be the case that there is either no electricity or the system is slow or down.

The issue in the second process comprises of short activity time, while long waiting time in the queue.

For a detailed analysis, we will take the first process into account: 

For this process, we will calculate the throughput time which in this case is 51 minutes for the whole transaction to take place including setup time.
The cycle time is the bottleneck time which here is 15 minutes in the first step. For the capacity calculation: we will divide 60/cycle time i.e. 60/15 = 4 transactions/hour.

Capacity utilization = Bottleneck time / capacity = 15 / 4 = 3.75.